America Just Got Its First Pizza ATM, and People Are Hyped

If you went to college in New York City, most likely you reveled in the wonders of dollar slice joints, hole in the walls that provide inebriated twenty-somethings with late-night pizza till wee hours of the morning. But if you didn't go to school in the five boroughs, late-night slice options might have been a bit more sparse, and at times even impossible to procure. Luckily, one school is using new technology to try and fix this epidemic.

According to Cincinatti.com, Ohio's Xavier University has just installed a 24-hour "Pizza ATM," which will dish out "fresh, restaurant-quality pizza in minutes." And while automated pizza-makers have long existed abroad, Xavier's invention is said to be the first machine of its kind in North America.

“We were looking for a way to solve this problem of having a late-night pizza option on campus," Jude Kiah, ” Xavier's assistant vice president, told Cincinatti.com. “And this meets our students where they’re at, in their residence hall. And we like the idea of being first and innovative and trying something new, there’s one Pizza ATM in the U.S. and this is it.”

To use the machine, students will need to select from a selection of toppings— standards like cheese, pepperoni, and veggie, as well as more specialty ingredients— and then pay with a card. The machine will then take a pizza from a refrigerated compartment and move it to a convection oven, where, three minutes later, a piping hot pie is presented to the student.

A 12-inch medium pie will cost $9. With that price—and with such a quick cooking time—the machine may sound like it spits out low-quality pies. But if you ask Kiah, the pizza gets Xavier's award-winning dining hall's stamp of approval.

"This machine delivers a pizza which is really second to no other pizza I’ve had,” Kiah said. “It’s serving the exact same quality pizza that’s in the dining facility.”

In order to produce high-quality pizza, Xavier brought in a chef from France and gave its cooks 40 hours of training with the machine. The idea was to create an artisanal pizza that can go from from machine-to-mouth in three minutes flat.

With an invention like this, we fully expect applications to Xavier to skyrocket heading into the fall semester.

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